Filmmaker taking a fond look back at ’70s and '80s La Mesa

Nostalgia has struck a Grass Valley man, and because of it, La Mesans — and those who have fond memories of the city in the 1970s and ’80s — are going to take a trip down memory lane.

Chad Nelson, a 1983 Helix High School alum, and graduate of Maryland Avenue Elementary and La Mesa Junior High, is making a documentary film showcasing a bygone era when young people skated at The La Mesa House of Ice and Aquarius Roll-A-Rena, bowled at La Mesa Bowl, ate at Straw Hat Pizza, and tried to finish the trough of ice cream called “The Zoo” at Farrell’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlour.

All those places are things of the past, some removed to make room for state Route 125, built in the late 1980s. But the memories have not faded.

“It’s an emotional thing for me,” Nelson said. “As time moves forward, things keep changing. That time in the rearview mirror is further and further away. It’s been long enough that I feel it’s urgently necessary to collect data and images from that time to preserve the great memories.”

Nelson is hardly alone in recalling screams of joy on the water slide after a round of miniature golf at Family Fun Center, or taking in a movie at Cinema Grossmont — where “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was on the marquee for more than one year.

La Mesa Police Chief Ed Aceves, a 1982 Helix alum, waxes nostalgic about his days growing up on Heidi Street when neighbors opened their doors to watch kids play Wiffle ball in the street long after the streetlights came on, let them jump in and out of swimming pools and fed them when they were hungry.

“We were without all the technological devices kids have today,” Aceves said. “Pong and Pac-Man were the top video games in those days. Things were very different. We entertained ourselves and we could be out till anytime. People were always looking out for each other. What we look at as ‘Neighborhood Watch’ today, that was just what people did. I’m not sure there was any criminal activity at all.”

Nelson said that as he watches his 7-year-old son grow up, he has been thinking more often of his own childhood.

He said he has been wanting to make this kind of a movie about La Mesa for “years and years,” noting what it was like to grow up in the 1970s in the city and “how it changed considerably in the 1980s and 1990s.” He said he hopes to “precisely, photographically re-create that time and place for any and all who might remember it.”

La Mesa Historical Society President Jim Newland said “stable, family-oriented La Mesa” in the 1970s and ’80s “was a very typical suburban community that had been pretty much built out. It was earning its reputation as the residential suburb of San Diego County.”

Nelson said he will be at the Aug. 12 La Mesa City Council meeting to talk about his film and his memories. He will also be visiting his father, Thomas Nelson, a professor of English literature and film at San Diego State, and who still lives in the family’s longtime home off Cowles Mountain Boulevard.